What are digital transformation technologies? Digital transformation is the adoption of digital technologies to transform organizations, through the replacement of manual or non digitally operated procedures with digital procedures or replacing aged digital technologies with new digital technologies. Such transformation has the potential to reduce costs and boost performance by implementing a number of processes that traditionally took a lot of human intervention. These processes can include but are not limited to – automation, data-warehousing, information security and business analytics. These processes will also help organizations to:
pandemic preparedness is a part of the digital transformation technologies roadmap. This concept covers two segments of the overall strategy. The first segment focuses on implementing preparedness techniques through engaging and training staff in outbreak preparation. This involves training people on how to safely store and handle various kinds of biohazards and infectious diseases as well as designing sanitary standards for work settings. The second segment consists of creating formalized and routinely scheduled Pandemic Management Information Plans (PMIPs).
According to estimates, Pandemic Preparation and Management may be the single largest expenditure and financial burden for companies in the global healthcare industry over the next five years. Since pandemics have the ability to rapidly spread across geographical boundaries and can be caused by any of a number of different infectious diseases, it is essential for healthcare managers to have a simple, universal strategy in place for containing and managing potential pandemic risks. In addition to managing possible threats to employees, this strategy should also cover potential threats to any other individuals who may come into contact with contaminated equipment or in general with patients’ health care settings. For this purpose, organizations need to look at digital transformations that will enable them to effectively deal with pandemic threats by improving their capacity to identify and respond to new infectious agents.
The Gates Foundation has led the way in terms of digital transformation technologies investments and claims that the programme will drive more people to work from home. This is particularly important in terms of productivity gains since an improved ability to tailor the work schedule to fit family needs opens up new forms of employment for women and the disabled. It will also help to raise the economic status of those at the lower end of the income spectrum. However, it will be important to consider whether there are sufficient monetary and human resources in developed countries to support the increased need for lower paid workers.
Another area potentially worth exploring through digital transformation technologies is artificial intelligence. As this technology advances and becomes more prevalent, organizations will require a better way to access, evaluate and communicate with different types of customers more easily. One way to achieve this is through the use of advanced customer service tools that can take data from multiple sources and form a more complete picture of a company’s activity. These tools will no doubt incorporate data from existing customer records and possibly new ones created through digitization or analytics. Such technologies are likely to provide organizations with a better understanding of their customer base, and this may lead to improvements in customer satisfaction as well as retention.
Some of the possible digital transformation technologies being explored by companies today relate to the use cases of voice recognition software, machine learning and digital signal processing. In the case of voice recognition software, this would allow customers to simply press a button to contact a company, rather than having to type in a telephone number or address. Likewise, machine learning may allow an organisation to automatically adjust the content it provides to each caller based on previous conversations they have had with the organisation, and with the potential use of digital signal processing this could allow call centres to make much more effective calls to their clients. The potential applications of these technologies are huge, and companies should be looking at how to exploit them for their benefit. However, one thing to keep in mind is that many companies will choose to implement some or all of these technologies on the basis that they will make them more cost effective.
Digital transformation is also being pursued through the use of big data, artificial intelligence, digital signal processing and analytics. Companies using digital transformation technologies will gain access to a huge amount of information regarding customer purchasing trends, market trends, consumer behaviour and so forth, enabling them to understand much more about their customers and what they want from their business. Advantages include providing the ability to make more informed decisions about your products and/or services, as well as helping you to improve the overall efficiency of your business. There are already a number of digital technologies that are being used in this way, including things like face recognition, natural language processing, database management systems and the internet of things.
However, one of the most exciting areas of research right now is artificial intelligence. Experts believe that in the future this technology will be the most widely implemented, used and talked about. Machine learning is ideal for digital transformation because it allows a company to easily take full advantage of the analytics that they can obtain. Machine learning involves training systems which are designed to mimic the way that humans would naturally search the world around them, searching out patterns and anomalies. By taking the full benefit of these systems, companies can take advantage of all the benefits of legacy systems while saving a great deal of money on their R&D.
Deepak Wadhwani has over 20 years experience in software/wireless technologies. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies including Intuit, ESRI, Qualcomm, Sprint, Verizon, Vodafone, Nortel, Microsoft and Oracle in over 60 countries. Deepak has worked on Internet marketing projects in San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange Country, Denver, Nashville, Kansas City, New York, San Francisco and Huntsville. Deepak has been a founder of technology Startups for one of the first Cityguides, yellow pages online and web based enterprise solutions. He is an internet marketing and technology expert & co-founder for a San Diego Internet marketing company.